New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

A long day on Great Bay

Thursday 09/02/2004

Headed out early this morning for a day of fishing with fishing friend Jean Brochu in his 28 foot Boston Whaler and his other fishing buddy Phil Audet. On the water at his Elliot Maine dock by 9 or so. Things looked bad right off when his refurbished boat wouldn't steer properly as we left the dock. We had planned a trip to the Isle of Shoals for strippers and blues. Our first trip out there in a couple of years. The boat kind of backfired soon after we headed down river then belched a few more times and died.

I convinced Jean that we should head back to the dock to check the boat and at least fish the river today. His mechanic at the yatch club suggested it was probably some moisture in the distributor cap and would clear up. It did seem to for a while. We drifted quite a bit and I did snag one 27 inch striper just below the Sullivan Bridge. We headed upriver and had some more skipping by Fox Point. Then the boat quite and wouldn't start despite our efforts at tracking down the problem. And we drifted some more, finally anchor just north of Adam's Point. We made numerous cell phone calls seeking advice and waved to a few boats in hopes of having an offer for a tow. Not a single boat offered assistance in our 3 hour or longer wait. We finally had Portsmouth Harbor Tow service get us back to the dock by about 6 PM.

Not a great day. As we were headed back to shore along the long dock I could hear some fish breaking. A bunch of schoolie stripers had a large school of smelt pinned up against the dock next to shore and were wreaking havoc with them. So the stripers were waiting for us back within a hundred feet of the truck. We watched a young lady try here best to catch one on a sabeki rig and several flashed at it.

I headed down to Rick about 8 PM. We spent a half hour or better at the edge of the Suncook River watching numbers of alewives migrating downriver. I figured the cool rain would trigger another run. And it did. It was nice to see them running and I have high hopes that the two hydro plants in Suncook will allow numbers to bypass the turbines. Perhaps I should check in the morning before heading to camp.